Late last September a typical Hollywood party--including Countess Dorothy di Frasso, Marino Bello (once stepfather of the late Jean Harlow). and Richard E. Pulley, cousin of Anthony Eden--put out of Los Angeles in the three-master Met ha Nelson for a month or so of shark-hunting. Master of the ship was German Captain Robert Hoffman. In the crew were several Jews. At San Jose, Guatemala, two of the crew jumped ship, got passage back to Los Angeles, where they were promptly arrested last week on a radioed complaint for "resisting the officers of an American vessel [mutiny]." Waiting the return of Captain Hoffman & Party, they told their side of the tale: while the Countess di Frasso and friends baited shark hooks on deck, the Captain was busy baiting Jews below.

The soldierly Duke of Gloucester, best rider-to-hounds in his family, broke his collar bone when his horse slipped on mud after ably taking a fence near famed Melton Mowbray. Result: he got out of going to Queen Maud's funeral and smooth Brother Kent had to go instead. Still rooting for the underprivileged, the Duke of Windsor asked a British workingman & family to spend a jolly Christmas with him and the Duchess at their Chateau La Croee, near Cap d'Antibes, French Riviera.

Henry Ford, who was once sued for $1,000,000 because of his anti-Semitic utterances, insisted that his acceptance of the Grand Cross of the Order of the German Eagle* "does not . . . involve any sympathy on my part with Naziism." To prove it, he authorized a warmly pro-Jewish statement. Excerpts: "I believe that the United States cannot fail at this time to maintain its traditional role as a haven for the oppressed. . . . Because of their special adaptability . . . [the Jews] would offer to the business of this country a new impetus at a time like this, when it is badly needed. ... I am confident that the time is near when there will be so many jobs available in this country that the entrance of a few thousand Jews, or other immigrants, will be negligible."

Mr. & Mrs. Guy W. Ballard and harp, custodians of the most cockeyed California cult of all--The Mighty I AM Presence-- arrived in Manhattan on a tour of the U. S. which they are making separately (he by car, she by plane, harp "by courtesy of American Express"). Most articulate of the cult's spokesmen: one Saint Germain. Example: "He raised George Washington up to be the focal point around whom the American patriots could rally. And he appeared at Independence Hall in Philadelphia in a moment of great hesitation and doubt and made an impassioned plea for the signing of the Declaration of Independence. When they turned around, after the signing, to thank him, he had disappeared." The Ballards' prayer: "Let us have every good thing, including money." Backstage in Manhattan's Carnegie Hall, while the Philharmonic's fiddles were a tuning, its doorman and its conductor, Londoners both, celebrated a common birthday. Augustus ("Gus") Wade, a short, military Britisher with grey handle bar mustaches, who for 45 years has been as much a part of Carnegie Hall as the plaster lyre that adorns its ceiling, was 83. John Barbirolli was 39. Together the birthday boys bent over a large white cake, huffed & puffed at their joint quota of 122 candles.

In a contest for the title of "proudest small town in America," judges awarded the prize to Cadiz, Ohio (pop., 2,597). Reason: it "has had more citizens of wide renown than any other community under ten thousand population." Some famed Cadizians: Critic Percy Hammond, Cinemactor Clark Gable, Robert P., Charles S. and Thomas A. Scott, inventors of ''the peach parer, the pea viner and the pea podder."

Lieut.-General Sir Reginald John Thoroton Hildyard, British Governor of the buggy-and-bicycle vacationland of Bermuda, few months ago applied to the Assembly for an automobile. (There are only half-a-hundred motor-driven vehicles on the Islands, none for private use.) The application was received with "ribaldry." and the Governor retired to his tent with a severe case of the haughties. Last week when the Speaker informed the Assembly of the Governor's still purple condition, the ribald Assemblymen sent their soothing respects.

* On his 75th birthday last July.

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